Slashdot Mirror
Duke Robot Climbs to Victory in Madrid
neutron_p writes "A wall-climbing, book-sized autonomous vehicle made by a Duke University team drove up a challenging vertical course to win first prize in an international competition in Madrid. Their robot Wallter was the only one that could start flat on the floor and climb the wall on its own, go over a barrier across the wall or stop itself after crossing the finish line."
This makes me wonder if it's the magnets that hold the robot, or the new "tornado in a cup"?
Go back and read it again, the magnets were only needed to help in getting over the 1cm barrier.
When will we see this as an add-on for the roomba?
When the walls are metal and they have no "barriers" that are over 1 cm (ie texture changes).
make your own
google cache, since we would deestroy geocities
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
This quote is taken directly from the article and accurate.
English is not this
Jason Janet, an adjunct professor in Duke's electrical and computer engineering department and faculty advisor on the robotics project, said the Madrid competition shows the growing importance of climbing robots.
"Robots that climb walls and cross ceilings can go where humans can't," Janet said. "They can do security and safety jobs like looking for bombs or finding cracks in a support beam or the wing of a jumbo jet."
The Duke team's leader was Brian Burney, a staff member at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering and graduate student at North Carolina State University. The other team members were Pratt School undergraduates Kevin Parker, Andrew Meyerson and Julien Finlay.
"Our robot Wallter was the only one that could start flat on the floor and climb the wall on its own, go over a barrier across the wall or stop itself after crossing the finish line," Burney said.
Added Meyerson, "As the smallest, fastest and most novel robot, Wallter was one of the most popular exhibits. I was interviewed for Spanish national television for a story about the conference featuring the Duke robot."
According to Burney, the Duke vehicle set itself apart when it rolled to the foot of a metallic wall, reared up on its hind wheels, and used a "tornado in a cup" to hug the wall and start its ascent.
The "tornado" is generated by a patented device from Vortex HC, LLC of Morrisville, N.C., said Janet, who is vice president of development at the company. The device uses air currents swirling in a cylinder, about the size of an upside-down tuna can, to exert suction on a wall or ceiling. An impeller in the cylinder spins like a propeller but recirculates captive air rather than sucking air in one end and blasting it out the other.
"It's a tornado in a cup, but no ordinary tornado," Janet said. "Two vortexes swirl simultaneously, one in a spiral and the other in a toroidal path, like a donut. The forces generated hold the vehicle to the wall and yet allow free movement because the cup never touches the surface."
Parker said the Madrid competition required performing five tasks: starting on the metal competition wall and climbing as high as possible; climbing after the addition of randomly placed obstacles; crossing a barrier placed on the wall; starting from the floor and then climbing; and stopping after crossing the finish line.
"We faced stiff competition from German and Italian teams," Parker said. "The robot from the University of Catania was amazingly good at detecting and avoiding all the obstacles. Our robot brushed against a couple of obstacles, but it was the only one that completed all five tasks."
Janet said the Duke team combined the "tornado in a cup" technology with an original control system. "A human operates Vortex's commercial robots by remote control," Janet said. "The students added sensors and wrote software that enables their robot to operate on its own."
Parker said they added ultrasonic and infrared sensors across the front and programmed a tiny computer, called a microcontroller, to navigate based on information from the sensors. Ultrasonic sensors detect objects by bouncing sonar-like sound waves off them. Infrared sensors, used in television remote controls, detect light outside the range of human vision.
Burney provided an initial basic design for the Duke vehicle, Janet said. Meyerson and Parker, both biomedical engineering students, focused on writing software and incorporating the sensors.
When tests showed the centimeter-high barrier broke the hold of the Vortex technology, Janet called in Finlay to solve the problem of crossing the barrier without falling off the wall. Finlay is a mechanical engineering student and a veteran of the team that produced Duke's prize-winning autonomous underwater vehicle Charybdis.
Finlay said he tried to design a solution that would work with or without the metal wall at the competition.
"We tried adding treads," Finlay said. "We tried a wheelie bar to keep the rear en
When will we see this as an add-on for the roomba?
When the walls are metal and they have no "barriers" that are over 1 cm (ie texture changes).
RTFA - if there aren't any barriers the walls don't need to be metal.
The mentioned contest is CLAWAR 2004 - MADRID . (See hundreds of pictures if you wish).
It's part of CLAWAR Climbing and Walking Robots. As you can see, the mentioned robot had a very different design from the usual spider-like design.
But how did the other teams that they allude to being very good manage to walk up a wall?
Looks like suction cups were a popular choice.
Androbot had those things in production, and you could really buy one. Now they're something of a collectable.
Duke's Web site has more pictures and a longer article
ScienceSeeker.org